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On his return to France he was introduced to the notice of Marie de Medicis by the Marquise de Guercheville and the Maréchal d'Ancre.
Thither he hastened in alarm: "What! am I driving you from your house?" "Sire," replied Madame de Guercheville, "where a king is, he should be the sole master; but, for my part, I like to preserve some little authority wherever I may be."
Unable to raise further funds on his own responsibility, he had accepted the proffer of assistance from Mme. de Guercheville, who, in her zeal, had also bought from De Monts all his claims over the colony, with the exception of Port Royal, which belonged to Poutrincourt. The King not only consented to the transfer but gave her a grant of the territory extending from Florida to Canada.
Now the wild heights rose in view; now the English could see the masts of a small ship anchored in the sound; and now, as they rounded the islands, four white tents were visible on the grassy slope between the water and the woods. They were a gift from the Queen to Madame de Guercheville and her missionaries.
The Jesuits had found an ally and the intended mission a friend at court, whose story and whose character are too striking to pass unnoticed. This was a lady of honor to the Queen, Antoinette de Pons, Marquise de Guercheville, once renowned for grace and beauty, and not less conspicuous for qualities rare in the unbridled court of Henry's predecessor, where her youth had been passed.
When the civil war was at its height, the royal heart, leaping with insatiable restlessness from battle to battle, from mistress to mistress, had found a brief repose in the affections of his Corisande, famed in tradition and romance; but Corisande was suddenly abandoned, and the young widow, Madame de Guercheville, became the load-star of his erratic fancy. It was an evil hour for the Bearnais.
A courtier named La Saussaye was chief of the colony, Captain Charles Fleury commanded the ship, and, as she winged her way across the Atlantic, benedictions hovered over her from lordly halls and perfumed chambers. On the sixteenth of May, La Saussaye touched at La Heve, where he heard mass, planted a cross, and displayed the scutcheon of Madame de Guercheville.
Desert instead. Madame de Guercheville, a true woman indeed, who was honored and respected in a dissolute court where honor was almost unknown, had become a zealous advocate of the conversion of Indians in America; and through her means and influence several priests of the Jesuit order were sent out in 1612 to this settlement.
The ladies of the Court, especially Madame de Guercheville, wife of Duke de la Rochefoucauld de Liancourt, whose reputation could not be assailed by the tongue of scandal, even in a state of society when virtue was too often the exception, interested themselves in the work of converting the savages of Acadia.
Regaining his liberty, he again addressed himself with what strength remained to the forlorn task of sending relief to his son and his comrades. Scarcely had Brother Gilbert du Thet arrived in France, when Madame de Guercheville and her Jesuits, strong in court favor and in the charity of wealthy penitents, prepared to take possession of their empire beyond sea.
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